


break of all heaven

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bodyswap, Childhood Friends, Distance, Gen, Inspired by Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name., Kita Shinsuke-centric, M/M, Miya Osamu & Kita Shinsuke Friendship, background pairing: sunaosa, it has elements of kimi no nawa but its not the same storyline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sometimes, the cost of being close to someone means being far apart from them.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91
Collections: Haikyuu: Spiker-Setter Week





	break of all heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalachuchii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalachuchii/gifts).



> dedicated to my best friend dan, who told me back in july: atsukita + kimi no nawa, and then my life has never been the same since. i know what we discussed followed the actual storyline, but i can never make aus like that and ended up incorporating some of my favorite elements from the movie for this story, which i wanted to be mostly original with just a lot of inspiration. still, i sincerely hope you will appreciate this small offering i have for whatever it may be worth. and to kit, who had beta-d this work, you are godsend. 
> 
> pls note that (1) this is an au, so the circumstances of both characters are different. i took a lot of creative liberties with their characterizations because i believe that environment shapes one's identity rather than the other way around, though i did retain what i personally believed to be kita and atsumu's core qualities. (2) i wrote this in three days because my classes start tomorrow and in order to make it to spiker-setter week ~~(and because i hate myself)~~.
> 
> tl;dr: if you don't vibe, don't read. if you decide to stick around though, then thank you so much. 
> 
> main inspiration for this story is day6's song [i'll remember](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSuRqiK9gk). it's probably my favorite song from this band. 
> 
> (for spiker-setter week day 2: swap)

It’s the fifth day of the week when Osamu eventually gains the courage to corner him in the kitchen and say, “Yer not ‘Tsumu.”

Kita doesn’t answer him. Instead, he switches off the water filter and hauls the two pitchers to the refrigerator to place them inside for cooling. The refrigerator door is full of pictures pinned by cheap magnets that the Miya’s grandparents had collected over the years. It’s the kind of thing that Kita would mostly see plastered on empty and spacious walls, but this family has never been anything close to conventional anyway. The photos vary—sometimes it’s of the twins, sometimes it’s their grandparents, sometimes it’s the _four_ of them—but though each background tells of a new place, each scenery is set in no other place but in Inari. 

This is something Kita knows not because he’s familiar with the terrain, but because it’s what Atsumu always used to tell him. _I’ve never been anywhere but here, y’know._

Kita’s eyes used to linger on these photos and feel like an intruder, looking into something he shouldn’t be seeing, but he’s wandered these halls and stepped into these rooms enough times that he’s long accepted that there are things he will catch and things that will stay in his mind, whether he wants to or not. The pictures contrast the drawings plastered on the walls of Atsumu’s room, sketches that tell of blurry figures of things not found in town, like parking lots, train stations, cell towers.

He can feel the weight of Osamu’s gaze as he does the menial chore, but he doesn’t feel pressured to answer in the slightest, as if he isn’t already used to enduring Osamu’s scrutiny even though he should because it’s not something he faces often. 

Then again, maybe Kita hadn’t just been paying attention. After he slips the pitchers in the fridge, he opens and closes his hand experimentally, like reminding himself of who he is and who he’s supposed to be. Osamu had said, _yer not ‘Tsumu._

He’s right. Despite the face he wears, despite the body he has control over, despite the life he’s been placed in, Kita is not Atsumu. 

“Who d’ya think I am, Osamu?” Kita asks instead. Even though it’s Atsumu’s voice who speaks, there’s a certain weight to it that isn’t reflective of his character. From the way Osamu shifts slightly, he’s thinking the same thing too. 

For a while, Osamu says nothing. “Kita-san,” he breathes out, like the realization is sucking out all the air in his lungs. “Kita-san. How long?”

* * *

Time has never been a thing Kita has found particularly fickle, but rather something to meticulously count and keep track of to put more meaning into it. Each day holds its own adventure, something new for him to learn even if it’s just repeated sets of daily routines. Atsumu once told him that he could never stick to that kind of mindset simply because the world moves too fast for him to think, always propelling him into action before he misses an opportunity worth taking. Even now, in Atsumu’s body, it’s not a concept Kita truly understands.

Still, for all of Kita’s efforts, he doesn’t remember things to the finest of detail, so he doesn’t actually know when it starts. He doesn’t know if it’s the first day of summer, or the second, or the third, fourth, fifth—just knows that _something_ started, and it’s already reaching its end. 

“How d’ya know it’ll end?” Osamu asks on their way to school. Summer classes take up a bulk of the season though, a requirement for students of Inarizaki High, which is the only school that Inari Town has. Atsumu complains enough about how it’s a waste of time to Osamu and Suna, Kita knows, but it doesn’t stop him from complaining to Kita too through the post-it notes, blank pages of any nearby notebooks, and on the reminder app in Kita’s phone, as if they can maintain a linear conversation and expect immediate answers. 

“Because everythin’ comes to an end,” says Kita. 

Osamu snorts, unimpressed. “What a deep, non-answer.”

Kita gives him a half-smile before saying, “Because it’s the end of summer.”

He can hear the cicadas from a distance. It’s a sound Kita knows he will miss dearly because they’re a lot harder to make out amidst all the city noise he’s spent three years learning to get used to. The stores they pass by on their way to school—a dentist clinic, a bar, a flower shop, never the same thing twice—will be things Kita will miss too even though he’s never stepped foot in them. Space here feels larger. Breathing comes easier. People are sparse but somehow it’s not lonely. Everyone here walks in their own direction, moves at their own pace, and this is mundanity Kita wants to treasure as long as he can. There are times when he can’t believe it’s only been three years since he last found himself somewhere that wasn’t in the city, but every moment of wonder and awe he feels just being here reminds him that something he’s long wanted is something he’s long lost. 

“I never really did get how ya tend to know so much,” Osamu says.

“We’ve never been that close, Osamu.” 

Osamu blinks, momentarily caught off guard by the blunt words, before he lets out a shrug. “Yer right,” He agrees. “It was always you and ‘Tsumu back then, huh.”

The last time Kita had seen any of them had been three years ago, fifteen and vaguely aware of the future but unaware of how much it would cost. It was summer too, and Atsumu would call it Kita’s season every time simply because they only got to meet during that period of time. They usually met every year, ever since their fateful first meeting when Kita had been ten and Atsumu nine, but the last time had been the last for a reason, and three years of absence had broken their tradition. 

It wasn’t necessarily Atsumu and Kita always sticking together, but rather Atsumu leaving Osamu’s side the moment Kita would come in the picture, intentionally or not. Kita’s priority had always been on taking care of his grandmother at her house, where he’d stay during the duration of his summer every time, so he never really went out to explore the town like he wanted to. Atsumu had always been the restless, adventurous type, wanting to go out and do something as often as possible—this was something Kita learned from spending time with him and from the few times he’d meet Osamu and Suna—but around Kita, he’d mellow down significantly, revealing a patient and solemn nature unexpected from his character, all just to be able to spend more time with him. 

“End of summer,” Osamu repeats Kita’s earlier words. “Does that mean you’ll be gone soon?”

They make their way past the campus gates. They toe off their shoes and slip them into lockers. The chatter of the other students fade into the background. It’s not that different from Kita’s school in the city except for the fact that there’s an air of familiarity among everyone, like supposed strangers can be friends and friends can be family. Kita doesn’t remember the last time he’s ever felt that. Three years ago, perhaps. 

As they make their way down the hall, Kita glances out the window. The glass offers a flimsy filter to the sunlight, but his eyes still drift to the sky without reluctance. It rarely ever rains in Inari. Yet another sign that it’s everything he wants but can’t have. 

“Today might be my last,” Kita says. 

He finally stops when he reaches the door of his classroom. Even though Osamu’s room is down the hall, shared with Suna, he follows Kita inside anyway, like there are things he still wants to know. In the back of the room are envelopes stuck to the wall, each one specifically meant for a student. Atsumu had explained through a post-it note that he stuck to Kita’s mirror that they were there for students to leave messages to other students anonymously, something meant to build a stronger bond between classmates and create harmony, but that he declared to everyone early on that his envelope was something for him alone. 

“How’d ya know it was me?” Kita asks Osamu, still feeling the other stare at him. Kita lifts a hand to run his fingers through the envelope meant for Atsumu, as if it’s his first time seeing it. If he presses his hand to it, he’d feel the bulk of papers inside even though Atsumu said that no one would leave anything for him because he didn’t want them to. Kita had asked about the reason once, but Atsumu refused to tell him. 

“That’s how I knew ya weren’t ‘Tsumu,” answers Osamu. “He pretends like that thing doesn’t exist even though he fills it up with a new super long love letter each day. Sometimes I think it’s ‘cause he’s doin’ it on purpose—writin’ a lot and makin’ a lot—just to give ‘em all in one go.” 

Kita pulls his hand back. Atsumu’s fingers have ink stains on them, and Kita has given up trying to find a way to get rid of them. Every time he wakes up to find himself as Atsumu and goes to school, feeling the envelope against his touch, he realizes that it grows thicker each day. It’s a sign of something—that he should stop, mainly, that this is likely the one thing Atsumu doesn’t want him to think twice about, but Kita is more selfish than people give him credit for. He is more lonesome than people expect. Or maybe there’s just something fundamentally wrong with him, because staying in Atsumu’s body doesn’t feel like being as close to him as compared to an envelope full of love letters he hasn’t even read.

“So he’s still a romantic,” Kita finally says, half phrased like a question, half not. “Even ‘till now.”

Osamu stares at him, like there’s something he’s trying to piece together and he’s having trouble doing so. But regardless as to what people think of him, Kita has never seen himself as someone particularly difficult to figure out. That’s always been Atsumu, the way he saw it, no matter how much he tended to wear his heart on his sleeve. After a few seconds, Osamu just turns around, making a move to leave. “You of all people should know that he never stopped.”

For some reason, that makes Kita smile. Hard to read, indeed. 

* * *

The switch happens at random times. There’s no way for them to predict it. Their first few days of trying to figure out what had happened to them—Kita, who one day woke up in Atsumu’s body in his quiet house to wind bells chiming, and Atsumu, who found himself staring at the view of skyscrapers rather than the wide expanse of Inari’s fields—involves a flurry of writings in different places: scratch paper, blank notebook pages, body parts. Kita puts his foot down when Atsumu almost writes on the walls, and eventually they’re able to establish ground rules to follow. 

Reminders and conversations should be limited to post-it notes pasted in obvious spots in the room, one of Atsumu’s unused and inconspicuous notepads (he has a lot), the reminder app on Kita’s phone (he checks it every day out of habit). If he doesn’t know something, mostly homework, Atsumu should ask Aran for help. If Kita doesn’t plan on saying something particularly scathing, then he should more or less ignore Osamu and Suna’s existences entirely. 

They make it work despite the very loose guidelines. It’s not like they work terribly under strict structure, but this is the kind of situation that has no rules and discipline can only stretch so far. Kita should avoid opening the windows. Atsumu has to arrange all the shoes in the rack according to size. Atsumu should always prepare two cups of tea and leave them on the dining table before going to bed even if he wakes up to a still-empty apartment. Kita should avoid talking to Atsumu’s grandmother about anything related to corded braids and dance technique (if he can’t, because he’s Kita, then he should just listen and nod politely to everything she says), and he should avoid talking to Atsumu’s grandfather in general. 

Atsumu complains that Kita makes him look like he’s constantly brooding (staring out the window, acting distracted), while Kita points out that he’s worrying Aran by the apparent impulsive decisions (emptying his wallet, wholeheartedly agreeing to the silly activities he and Omimi jokingly suggest). In return, Kita says that according to Osamu, Atsumu has always been like that, daydreaming about something more; Atsumu tells Kita that the recklessness is actually good for him, makes him look like he’s loosened up and now he spends more time with his friends rather than head home immediately. 

_I don’t get why they say yer always headin’ home._ Atsumu types in Kita’s reminders app. _It’s not like there’s anythin’ here worth comin’ back to._

Kita replies to all of Atsumu’s messages and inquiries, but this is one he leaves without saying a thing. The answer is because he doesn’t actually go home. Halfway through the journey to the familiar route down to the apartment of his parents, he’ll suddenly meander down to a small temple tucked in between an alleyway where he’d go down on his knees and ask about gods. The graveyard is too far and this is the closest thing he has to his grandma. Kita has never done anything by halves, has never seen the need to, but just because you give the world something doesn’t mean it’ll do the same. He’d been taught well by his grandma to never be ungrateful, but Kita can’t help the times he would walk to the middle of the intersection, surrounded by tall buildings and crowds of people and so much noise but not enough _life_ and think, _I don’t want this_. 

It hadn’t been a wish—just a thought he’d entertain occasionally, believing that it would eventually lose its meaning because words lost their meaning if they were said enough times. Like _it’s not that bad if you think ‘bout it._ Like _you’ll come back here someday, I promise._ Like, _I promise I’ll be okay_. 

It hadn’t been a wish, but then summer had started with the sight of sunlight streaming out the window and the view of the large, tranquil lake at the center of Inari, and Kita wondered if the gods thought he’d been praying to gain something instead of wishing it away. 

Over lunch, Kita stays in the large garden at the back of the campus, on a picnic bench under a large tree that Osamu and Suna have long declared as strictly theirs. Atsumu doesn’t actually eat with them, hanging out more with his classmates Gin and Kosaku in the Gym in case they’ll wanna play basketball right after, but Atsumu isn’t actually here, and Kita more at ease when he’s with Osamu and Suna. This is what Osamu says is another subtle indicator that today he isn’t actually with his brother, but this is the kind of thing that would make Atsumu reply, if he were really here _, that’s rich, comin’ from the guy who took forever to realize somethin’ was wrong._

Sometimes Kita has strange thoughts, like wanting to hear Atsumu’s voice even though he does the moment he speaks, because right now, he _is_ Atsumu. But even if he can mimic his baritone and knows the sort of snarky remark Atsumu would make, it wouldn’t be the same, because Atsumu isn’t actually here. It’s strange, missing someone when it feels like you’re as closest to them as you can be. 

“Ya don’t know what caused it, right?” Osamu asks, as Kita unravels the napkin to eat his sandwich. It’s just the two of them right now since Suna had to see the teacher for something. Kita had walked to Osamu’s classroom right when the bell for lunch rang, long used to the pause Osamu and Suna would always share before they’d part, like it pained them to do so even if it was for only a short while. Kita didn’t have to be in Atsumu’s shoes to know that it was a common occurrence. Even though he’d never been close with them the same way he was with Atsumu back when he stayed at the outskirts of Inari with his grandma, he knew about the two of them. 

(“They’re in love,” Atsumu had once told him. Kita was thirteen and Atsumu was twelve and a year of age difference didn’t change the fact that he thought they were a bit too young for a conversation like this, but the way Atsumu spoke made him realize that he wasn’t saying something for the sake of saying something, but because he actually meant it. 

“How do ya know?” Kita asked. They were in the backyard of his grandma’s house, hanging out the clothes for drying. It was really just Kita doing it; though Atsumu wanted to help at first, the fact that he was a lot shorter than Kita gave him a harder time, so he opted to just keep him company instead to make sure he didn’t ‘die of boredom’. 

“They don’t mind stayin’ here,” Atsumu replied. “They don’t care ‘bout where they are, so long as they’re together.”

Kita glanced at him. Atsumu was lying down on the grass without a care in the world as Kita continued to work. Inari had the brightest sun, but Atsumu had never been afraid to stare directly into the sky. Bold, even at twelve, eleven, ten. The first day they met, Atsumu had insisted that he could prove to Kita that he was fearless. He was thirteen and Atsumu was twelve and a year of age difference didn’t change the fact that he thought they were a bit too young for a conversation like this, but Kita had always been smart for age and understood, then, that love was not a concept so hard to grasp when he looked at Atsumu, who would often get lost in his own thoughts like it could truly take him someplace else.)

“No,” Kita replies, leaning his back on the table. It doesn’t matter, the way he sees it, not when it’s about to come to an end. When it’s all over, when he’ll look back at these unpredictable summer days, he doesn’t want to think about _why_ it happened, but rather what he had done about it. Atsumu is not like this, never wanting to settle for less when he’s gotten a taste of something he wants even more of, and though Kita has been taught well by his grandma to never be grateful, though he hasn’t actually seen or spoken to Atsumu in three years, it doesn’t change the fact that there are moments when he wants to be the same, that there are moments when he wants to _want_ just as freely. 

“It’s probably ‘Tsumu’s fault,” says Osamu, swinging his legs absentmindedly. “That guy, he says lotsa stupid stuff and doesn’t believe that they’ll have any consequences.” 

“The gods are always listenin’.” 

Osamu snorts. “If only ya told ‘im that three weeks ago.” He lies down, sprawled on the picnic table without a care in the world, closing his eyes. “We were walkin’ home from the shrine that night, I think, ‘cause we just finished doing the kagura dance, and then he just started screamin’ ‘bout how he hated everythin’ and wanted to get outta here. He was sick of Pa tellin’ ‘im that the rituals were important even if Pa only nags ‘im’ bout it so he’d stop half-assin’ ‘em.”

“That’s nothin’ new,” Kita remarks about Atsumu’s lack of enthusiasm for Inari's customs and the scuffles he’d have because of it. “He’s never been a believer—” _Why hope for somethin’ I can’t hold?_ Atsumu had questioned. _Why believe in somethin’ else when I can just believe in myself?_ “—and he always wanted somethin’ bigger than Inari.”

“First time he said he wanted to go to the city though,” Osamu says, opening his eyes just to look at Kita, his gaze knowing. “Maybe he did want the gods to hear ‘im.”

Before Kita can ask what that means, they hear footsteps approach them and turn to see Suna, who stops and raises an eyebrow. “Am I interrupting something?” 

“Just ‘Tsumu being stupid as always,” Osamu answers breezily, and Kita just ignores him, letting out a little huff just to at least make the effort of putting up an act. “Rin, c’mere.”

Kita watches Suna take a step closer as Osamu stretches his arms out; he watches the way they gravitate towards one another instinctively. Kita had once thought that someday he would be able to find a love like that, but gravity, it seems, would rather pull them apart. 

* * *

Kita has only seen Atsumu dance once, and it ends up being the last time they see one another. Every time he comes to Inari for the summer to see his grandma and look after her, he’s never wandered far from her house or left to go on anything but errands out of fear that she’d need him and he wouldn’t be there. 

Tonight turns out to be different when she catches him gazing out the window, looking not at the horizon with its setting sun but to the direction of the mountain where a small fire could be made out, marking the place where Atsumu and Osamu would be performing their ceremonial dance. 

“You’ve never attended one, right?” she inquires. “You should go see yer boy. I’ll be fine here.”

“Why now?” Kita asks. 

“I dunno,” she muses, reaching out to her grandson. Kita lets her comb through his hair. She still looks sickly, but she’s clearly pleased, like something is about to happen and she likes what it is. He doesn’t have any clue what it is, but he doesn’t press. “Today just feels different.” 

Kita comes right on time, with the music playing from the stereo propped at the corner of the three-story open house where the twins are performing, the distance reminding people that they could stare but never get too close. Despite Atsumu’s tendency to make it known that he’s displeased about doing something, to the untrained eye, to someone who barely knows Atsumu, it doesn’t show much when he dances. His expression is carefully blank—solemn, even—as he moves around in sync with Osamu. There are no pauses or traces of hesitation in their movements, which reveal nothing but fluidity and precision, knowledge that came about from countless hours of practice and respect (though even that concept alone is complicated when it comes to Atsumu) for what it symbolizes.

When Atsumu said he could do the performance and the ritual with his eyes closed, Kita hadn’t doubted him, and he thinks, even now, that it would be better if Atsumu does it that way anyway, just to at least hide the misery in his eyes. 

Though Kita blends in the crowd well, somehow, he still catches Atsumu’s eye. It’s for the briefest of seconds, more like a sweeping glance one would normally not think twice about, but Atsumu is Atsumu, and suddenly, there’s a light that sparks in his eyes, a faint pink coloring his cheeks. From the corner of Kita’s eye, he sees Suna, leaning on the railing on elevated area that puts him at the same height as the twins, and the way he startles, like he’s realized that this is the first time that Atsumu has ever looked that lively during the dance. 

“Can’t believe ya didn’t tell me ya were comin’,” Atsumu grunts later on, after the ceremony ends and people go home. Osamu had left without Suna the moment they spotted Kita approaching them, and the twins’ grandparents tried their best to not attend these things when they expected their grandchildren to be responsible enough to uphold the tradition on their own. Their grandpa would usually be there anyway, just because he and Atsumu would argue about it like they always did, but tonight is an exception, apparently. When Kita asked why, Atsumu said he didn’t know; he just wasn’t in the mood to pick a fight with his old man. 

“I didn’t plan to,” Kita says. _I’m glad I did though_ , he wants to say, but he thinks it’s obvious enough, from the shy way Atsumu walks with him, like he’s embarrassed about the realization and the sincerity in what remains unsaid between them. 

“Yer granny let ya?” asks Atsumu. 

“She said today was different,” Kita replies. “In a special way, I s’ppose.”

After reaching the bottom of the mountain, they wander around town, neither of them really wanting to head home just yet. In the end, they find themselves by the shore of the lake at the center of the town. It occurs to Kita that he’s never actually been here, merely saw it from a distance or walked past it while doing other, more urgent things. It’s a disheartening thought, realizing that Inari is everything he wants but he can’t let himself indulge in it. Not when his grandma is his priority, the sole thing that keeps him rooted here in this small town he wants to call home. 

“Well, please don’t do it again,” mumbles Atsumu. “‘Cause I hate doin’ it.” 

“I like it though,” Kita says. “Even if ya don’t see it or know it, the gods are probably glad that yer puttin’ in all that effort."

“It’s a biweekly ritual of doin’ the same thing over and over,” Atsumu says, but there’s nothing biting about the remark, and he only sounds unimpressed. The stillness of the water stops Kita from giving him a lecture, the sight of something so unbothered and calm instilling the same attitude in him. He isn’t Atsumu’s grandpa, and it’s not like he hadn’t said his piece. It’s not like this is the only time they have differing opinions on these things, after all, and their relationship has never wavered because of it. Besides, Kita prefers it when Atsumu is honest with him, rather than lying just so that Kita will hear what he wants to hear. “Why would the gods ever look twice at us when we’ve done nothin’ special?” 

“I don’t know,” Kita admits with ease, sitting down and folding his legs because he’s tired of standing. “I’m not a god.”

Atsumu lets out a laugh at that. Kita watches him bend down to pick up a pebble. He’s going to grow tall, Kita thinks, and even though the difference right now is only obvious because Kita is sitting and Atsumu is standing, he thinks that it’ll only be a matter of time before Atsumu practically towers over him. 

“We weren’t s’pposed to do the dance tonight, actually,” says Atsumu. “But it’s been circulating ‘round that there’s a shooting star comin’. Only happens once every three years or somethin’, at some random time in the summer. Ma wanted us to give thanks for the opportunity to have our prayers answered.”

“There’s this sayin’ that grandma told me ‘bout,” Kita says as Atsumu tries to skim the pebble across the water. It sinks after three touches, and Atsumu lets out a dissatisfied huff. “That yer wish gets granted the closer ya are to somethin’ divine.”

“Pa told me somethin’ like that too.” Atsumu picks up another stray pebble. “‘S why this shooting star that’s gonna pass by is a big deal, ‘cause for once, we’ll actually see it. Not that it makes us anywhere closer to it.” Atsumu looks like he’s about the throw again, but then seems to think better of it. He takes one glance at the pebble before looking to the sky. “Kita-san.”

Kita hums. 

“There’s this place past the mountain where Grandma says the shrine god—Musubi—is buried,” Atsumu explains. “I’ll take ya there one day. So ya can get yer wish granted.”

“What makes ya think I have any wish I want granted?”

“So there ain’t anythin’ ya want?” Atsumu challenges. Kita doesn’t say anything to that. “Then I’ll take ya there so I can get _my_ wish granted.”

Kita stares at him, aware that Atsumu is being sarcastic, but the words still have weight to them, hinting at something that only the people closest to him—Suna, Osamu, _Kita_ —know of. 

“Why do ya wanna get outta Inari so badly?” he asks. 

“‘Cause everyone thinks this is all there is to life,” Atsumu says. “Routines, traditions, _just having enough_. But I don’t wanna be tied down to any of those things when I know there’s somethin’ out there for me, and it’s somethin’ big. I’d be stupid to ignore it, to not try and take it.”

There’s a fire in his voice, heated and passionate and wholehearted in his words. Atsumu doesn’t believe in higher beings and wish-granting and divinities. He doesn’t like what he can’t reach and touch, doesn’t want to put his faith into something he doesn’t know when what he _does_ know is reliable enough to believe in. The only kind of abstract beyond he cares for is no god, no mystical force, but the world as a whole and what it has to offer him. 

“I’ll never get it,” Kita admits. 

“It’s ‘cause yer grandma’s in Inari,” Atsumu tells him, sitting down beside him. He leans to the side, shoulder pressing against Kita’s. “It’s ‘cause this is her home, and she’s yer home, but—I don’t have any of that, y’know? Nothin’ here is enough to make me wanna stay; everyone just wants to tie me down and make me do what they want ‘cause that’s the way it’s always been in Inari.” Then Atsumu looks at him, and something in his expression softens. “'S why I like it whenever ya come here, Kita-san. When yer ‘round, this place becomes a little more tolerable.”

The thing is, knowing how Atsumu sees things doesn’t mean Kita can relate. It doesn’t mean he can truly understand. Kita knows what he wants—festivals held by small towns, biking down a secret pathway with Atsumu to get to the docks for the fish market, waking up to make breakfast for his grandma—and it’s never been as grand or as vague as Atsumu’s dreams. Atsumu wants something too big to be something concrete enough to imagine.

They could not be any more different: Kita, who can find everything he wants here to the finest of details—the places, the people in these places—and Atsumu, who believes he can find it anywhere else _but_ here, regardless of what it might actually be.

They are not the same. Kita doesn’t want Atsumu’s certainty for what is unknown. Atsumu doesn’t want Kita’s contentment for what is too easy to grasp. Opposite ends of the spectrum, like gravity wants to pull them apart. But right now they’re touching and there’s nothing that makes Kita want to move away, nothing that repels him to. 

“What are ya thinkin’ ‘bout, Kita-san?” Atsumu wonders, voice curious and soft. 

_How we’d be better off livin’ each other’s lives._ Kita wants to say. Instead, he says, “That summer’s ‘bout to come to an end.” 

“Yeah,” Atsumu replies, sounding sad. A streak of white briefly stains the dark, twinkling sky. “Did ya make a wish?”

“I thought ya didn’t believe in that sorta thing.”

Atsumu doesn’t really answer him. “That’s why I’m askin’ if yer the one who did.”

Moments like this make Kita think he doesn’t need to make a wish, that he doesn’t _need_ to want, because everything he wants is already here. It’s not permanent, but it might not always be about how long something lasts, but rather than it did, at some point. Even if it’s just for a few years, for a summer, for just a night. 

Still, he says, “I hope ya find somethin’ that’s worth chasin’.”

“Come back next summer,” Atsumu replies. “Maybe by then I’ll have the answer.”

Kita distinctly remembers Atsumu saying something like this last year, like he’s trying to give him reasons to come back, as if Kita won’t do it, as if he would ever _not_ want to. 

“Okay,” Kita says, pulling away, just he always does, every year, at the end of every summer. _Okay_ , a simple, single-worded promise. _Okay_ , meaning: _I’ll come back. I always will, because there is nowhere else I want to be but here._

Kita is fifteen when he breaks that promise, when his grandma insists that _today is different_ like it’s something special except it’s the day she breathes her last breath. Kita is fifteen when he breaks that promise, when his parents take him and his grandma’s corpse away to the city, and Kita can’t come back when he has no more reason to return. 

The first time he walks home, back from the small temple he stumbled upon in an alleyway because he wants to be closer to his grandma somehow but the graveyard is too far away, he thinks about Atsumu, who isn’t as concrete with his beliefs, who says he wants to escape his life but also says that he doesn’t mind living it as long as Kita is by his side. And even though they’re different—Kita, who clings onto his certainties, and Atsumu, who embraces how he has none of them—he thinks he understands where Atsumu is coming from: that he can bear with something he doesn’t want so long as there’s someone by his side to help him get through it, no matter where they are, no matter what they’re enduring.

(Maybe Atsumu isn’t the only romantic between them. Maybe Kita is just as idealistic and just as hopeful. This is why they gravitate to one another, just as they are pushed apart.)

* * *

“We’re goin’ to the burial place of Musubi,” Osamu declares when Kita walks to him after classes have ended. Kita simply blinks at him. “Thought you’d wanna see it before ya left. Since it’s yer last day and all.”

They’ve never been close, and it’s not like Kita has ever expressed wanting to go, so he figures that it must have been because of Atsumu. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

Osamu must not expect the reply, because he blushes abruptly. “Whatever,” he just says. Then, as if remembering that he’s talking to Kita, he adds. “It’s nothin’ much, honestly.”

The burial place is behind the large mountain of Inari, so the trek is steep and long-winded. They move slowly despite how the day is not endless and Suna, who is with them even though he doesn’t know a thing, complains to Osamu the entire time about the abrupt decision to do the adventure. Kita lingers behind, not really paying attention to the two. Despite the heat that lingers in the air and the cramped, bumpy roads they must walk to their destination, Kita can still appreciate everything he’s surrounded by—the way the leaves of the trees tickle his cheeks, how a butterfly flutters and circles around Kita’s hand like he has something to offer before continuing on its own journey, and a breeze that will brush by to let him inhale the fresh scent of earth and remind him of what it means to be alive. 

It’s a good day. Nothing has really happened, but Kita finds that it’s a good day. Every day in Atsumu’s place, he thinks, has been a good day. So maybe he hadn’t really made the most out of his time here, exploring the ins and outs of Inari like he always wanted to but couldn’t, but he’s never needed a lot to be happy, to be content. What he gets in increments is enough. What he gets from just taking a step forward, breathing in, letting his eyes wander, is more than enough. He has always known what he’s wanted, and it has never been anything particularly complex. 

If Atsumu were here, he’d tell him to not be afraid to be a little greedy, but Kita hasn’t tasted air like this in three years, and he thinks he’s allowed to move and feel things at the pace he wants to not get overwhelmed. 

“I’m surprised you’re tagging along, Atsumu,” Suna remarks at some point. It takes Kita a beat to realize that Suna is talking to him. “Don’t you hate this sort of stuff?”

Kita shrugs. “I got nothin’ better to do.”

Judging from the look on Suna’s face, it’s an acceptable enough reply. “Makes sense,” he allows. “I mean, you have been putting a little more effort into the dances even though you keep on whining about it. It’s nice, seeing you not scream at your grandpa for once before a ritual.” 

The trees that crowd together provide them enough shade to protect them from the afternoon sunlight. When they reach the end of the road, the first thing Kita sees up ahead is a small rocky hill they still have to cross to reach their destination. Suna moans at the sight, clearly unhappy. 

“Just leave me here,” Suna begs, when they first stop right by a tree shade, gazing at the view ahead. “I’m going to nap.”

“Lazy,” Osamu teases lightly, but he ruffles Suna’s hair affectionately anyway when the latter sits down and leans on the trunk, already exhausted, not that upset that his best friend isn’t going with them. Osamu turns to Kita. “Let’s go.”

The incline of the hill is lower, so it should be easier, but the rockiness of the ground makes Kita stumble a bit with his slow pace, unused to the feeling when he’s walked on even pavements more often. Osamu walks leisurely, unaffected by the obstacles like it’s something natural to him, or maybe he’s just good at pretending like they’re nothing to scoff at. 

“What Rin said was true, y’know,” Osamu suddenly says. 

“Which part?”

‘Bout ‘Tsumu bein’ a little more decent ‘bout all this, whenever it's actually him around. Tradition, gods, beliefs.” Osamu waves a hand. “Didn’t know why but—you comin’ back, it gave ‘im a little more faith, I think.”

“In a god?” 

“In the idea of makin’ the most outta what ya got,” Osamu tells him. _That’s good to hear_. Kita thinks, and it is. He just wishes that he could actually see it—that he could actually see _Atsumu_ , and not from simply looking at a mirror or digging through his existing memories of him. Then, as if finally noticing how he’s having a hard time climbing, Osamu says, rather than offer to him, “Let’s run.”

Kita frowns. “Why?”

“It’d be easier.”

“I don’t think it’d be.”

Osamu shrugs. “That’s the kind of thing ‘Tsumu would tell ya though.”

That makes Kita smile slightly, amused. “Ya keep on mentionin’ ‘im.”

“That’s ‘cause he always has somethin’ to do with anythin’ related to ya,” Osamu says, already moving. “C’mon, I ain’t waitin’ for ya, Kita-san.” 

Kita finds his legs moving on their own accord when he sees Osamu start to run ahead. He doesn’t remember the last time he ran, let the wind hit his face and his muscles strain with effort from his own volition, riding on the building high of his emotions as he absorbs the sensations of his surroundings and the way it makes him feel. This is not his body, not as familiar and responsive to his movements despite spending a significant amount of time utilizing it, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kita feels so surprisingly and inexplicably _free_ , like a weight he hadn’t known was resting on his shoulders has suddenly vanished. He feels almost invincible. He doesn’t know if this is something he’s truly feeling or if it’s a result of being in Atsumu, who has always moved like freedom flowed in his veins, or a matter of both. 

Osamu glances back and laughs when he sees Kita trying to catch up to him despite the way the hill’s terrain makes it hard for them to move easily. For a second, when Kita blinks, it’s Atsumu he sees instead of Osamu, beaming and baiting him to come closer. It makes Kita run faster. 

When they reach the top, letting out small puffs to breathe easier and recover from the abrupt sprint, they’re greeted with the sight of an expanse of a beautiful plain, grassy fields with thin streams of water woven almost randomly around the area, and a large tree that sits right at the center. Then Kita looks around to realize that what they had climbed hadn’t been a hill, but the edge of a crater. It makes his breath hitch in awe, the unexpectedness of the structure and how it evokes nothing but wonder in him. 

“Musubi’s body,” Osamu says, gesturing to their surroundings. It’s a vague but true statement, when _musubi_ is a word that has many meanings to it, past the name of Inari’s god.

Kita’s grandma had told him that Musubi was truly like—capable of taking many forms and seen in the most inconspicuous of gestures and the largest decisions one could make. Inari is a land found on believers, people who cling onto their customs and culture because that’s what shapes their identity. It has never been surprising that Atsumu could not fit into their standard when he’s only wanted to define himself on his own terms, more than being an Inari villager, more than being the grandson of one of the town’s most influential leaders, more than being someone else’s twin. 

“They say the closer ya are to somethin’ divine, the higher yer chances are of yer wish bein’ granted,” Osamu says as they start making their way down the slope. 

“I told Atsumu that once,” Kita replies fondly. “The last time we spoke.”

Kita can feel the softness of the grass through the soles of his shoes. They hop across stones to cross the streams to make it to the center. The air around them is quiet save for an occasional breeze and the rush of water. 

They eventually stop when they near the tree, not daring to go beyond that point because of the belief of crossing the supposed underworld. Kita is more than satisfied with this anyway, being able to see this integral part of Inari’s history and the foundation of their culture, morphing their people into who they are today, Atsumu included, no matter how much he wants to deviate and separate himself from it. 

“Was this a good way to spend yer last day here, Kita-san?” Osamu asks, crouched down and slipping a stick into the water, watching it right against the current. “I know it wasn’t much, but you’ve never been the type to care much about that stuff.” 

“Ya didn’t have to do this for me,” Kita points out. He takes a deep breath. “But it’s more than I could ever ask for, so thank you.”

Osamu smiles wryly, looking distant. “‘Tsumu should’ve been here though. I think ya would’ve had the time of yer life if ya went here together.”

“He doesn’t care ‘bout stuff like this.”

“But you do.”

Kita looks to the clear sky. “I’m okay,” he says. “I’m makin’ the most outta this, and Atsumu’s enjoyin’ himself out there in the city, so we’re both happy.”

“‘Tsumu as a city boy, huh,” Osamu mumbles. “I’d say that takes balls, but he doesn’t even have the courage to send any of those stupid love letters. Not that anyone would wanna read ‘em, I think. Bet there’s lengthy and sappy and disgustin’.” 

Maybe, Kita thinks, but he wouldn’t know, because when he leafed through them with the realization that Atsumu would’ve hid them in a better spot if he really didn’t want Kita to see them, when he realized that he _needed_ to read them, all of Atsumu’s letters had contained words he shaded to the point where they were unreadable. Only one letter had been clean, and despite Atsumu’s preference for long-winded rambles, despite how he took his time when explaining something, despite how he liked to stretch a conversation, all the paper had said were three words. 

“Hey, Kita-san,” Osamu says. “Do ya wanna make any wish?”

The last time Kita and Atsumu spoke, Atsumu asked that same question as a star had shot across the sky. Kita said then, _I hope ya find somethin’ that’s worth chasin’_. But what lies in the aftermath of running after something and finding it? What is Atsumu going to do when he finally grasps onto that abstract idea and finally makes it into something tangible enough to hold? “I hope he finds somethin’ that’s worth stayin’ for.” 

“Kita-san, ya don’t need to worry ‘bout that,” Osamu says. The reply confuses Kita, makes him question if it’s because Atsumu being in the city and loving it already means he’s found it as something worth staying, the same way Kita wants to stay in Inari because he loves it. They are not the same, on opposite ends of the spectrum. But Kita would remember being younger and all the ways they’d just catch eyes for the briefest of moments, and thinks about how they must exist on the same plane nonetheless to be able to see one another, to be able to touch as they always have, to share time like they did before. “‘Cause the way I see it, the only thing that could make ‘Tsumu stay is you.” 

Would gravity let it though? Kita wonders idly. Would gravity let them become close, when one wants to fly and the other wants to remain on the ground, when they still want different things but still want to touch. 

“You think somethin’ like gravity would be enough to stop someone like ‘Tsumu though?” Osamu says, and it takes Kita a beat to realize he had said the words aloud. 

“No,” he admits, after a few seconds of contemplation. The first day they met, Atsumu had insisted that he could prove to Kita that he was fearless. Kita is not the same, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, that maybe he should start doing the same. 

“I’m glad that ‘Tsumu met ya,” Osamu tells him. “And I’m glad we could talk like this, Kita-san. Though I would’ve liked it better if ya were in yer actual body.”

“Me too,” Kita says. He watches as the sky begins to set, watches the orange hues turn pink before morphing into a deep purple as if they don’t want to fade to black just yet, like they don’t want the day to be completely over. If Kita blinks, he thinks he could imagine seeing a shooting star; if he blinks, then he could recreate the warm touch of Atsumu’s shoulder pressing against his. 

If he blinks, then this moment could feel a lot like living a dream that he doesn’t want to forget. How strange it is, to miss someone so far away, but to experience something that makes you feel closer to them. Kita is beginning to realize that his life is full of unexplained contradictions, but it’s not the worst. It’s something he can be content with. 

When he opens his eyes, he’s no longer in the rich fields of Inari, no longer in the comfortable futon in Atsumu’s room, no longer gazing out at the waters and appreciating the duality of its stillness and commotion. Instead, he wakes up to find himself back in his bed, eyes catching the sight of a nearby skyscraper, ears ringing with the sound of his alarm clock. 

Kita sits up, finding his memory foggy at best. As he looks out the window to see crowds bustle in the streets, shops down the streets opening up, the noise from cars honking and construction ongoing, he believes, for a brief moment, that it had all been a dream. 

But when his gaze drifts, he realizes that there are ink stains on his hands. When his gaze drifts, he realizes that his room is littered with sketches. He slips out of the bed, feet taking him to the sketch posted on the mirror—the familiar image of a crater, a tree at the center, lines swirled around it to mimic streams of water. At the bottom of the paper are the words, _I love you_. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for sticking around and making it until the end. kudos and comments are greatly appreciated. 
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/inarizakicks) // [cc](https://curiouscat.me/lightproof)


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